Antonov An-124 Ruslan (UR-82072)

it should read AN-124.

Thanks. Flightaware recognizes it as A124. I originally put An124 and it dropped the 4.

@George Maidens: Flightaware uses the four-character ICAO aircraft type designators for consistent aircraft identification. See https://www.icao.int/publications/DOC8643/Pages/Search.aspx

So this Antonov is still in service? I guess it doesn't belong to a Russian company. Good luck getting parts and service.

@Chris Ashley - wasn't it destroyed by the Russians in the Ukraine recently ?

no @Bill Piper - that was its 6-jet twin-tail big brother, An-225, which I think was a one-off. There have been around 50 An-124s built.

Great Photo of a beautiful Air Freighter.

Cool plane and a great pic!

Majestueux! Belle photo

I used to work for a little aerospace company called Lockheed and we shipped commercial satellites/payloads on these things out of Moffett Field in Mt View right next to our Sunnyvale campus. This was in the late-90s. The crew was Russian and the pilots (usually 4) were British. The plane had Aeroflot insignia. Part of our deal with them was to have a full-sized van available to the cargo crew - IIRC there were 17 on the cargo deck - who would go to the Costco up 101 about 2 miles on Rengstorff where they would buy cigarettes, Levi's and any other chic commodity (mostly non-perishable) for resale on the black market at an outrageous price in Russia. I would sneak a peak when they came in and was impressed by the aircraft and crew. I hear the cargo operation was fairly decoupled from any kind of Russian management which was why it was such an impressive cargo system. They could move our high-value cargo at low risk for a fraction of the cost of an overland or maritime trans-shipment. They compared favorably with our C-5 and the strange thing was the Russian army was so poverty-stricken they couldn't afford to use them.

Simply wonderful...

Lovely little monster! 🥰

Thank you for sharing this Unique photo and perspective

2sheds. Small world, I was NASA at AMES ramp/hanger.
David Malsher: From my research, yes, 225 was a one off, shame on Russia!